Mid-spring reset after Mother's Day Criterium

My training was going great, I was approaching my rest week and then started to get super fatigued. At first it felt ok riding endurance pace, but then I wasn't able to hit the high end watts. Then on Thursday, my heart rate wasn't climbing as much as I expected when doing some Sydenham repeats for my watt output. This was made even more evident when we timed an all out effort and I was beat by a new teammate, and another member of the Hamilton cycling club. Both of these guys are strong, but I know I should have been at least 20 seconds faster.

Friday came and my legs felt like death. I took the day off asides from an easy half hour spin on the Hamilton SOBI bikes, hoping it would help speed the recovery. I just needed to feel good by Sunday.

Saturday came and I still felt sluggish. I decided to sleep in and ride easy with my brother. 170 watts felt like a struggle, despite a low heart rate of around 120bpm. I put in one, 2-minute effort over 400watts to test the legs and then I convinced myself that I would be good to go for the race. I finished the ride with a nice protein smoothie, and tried to eat good for the rest of the day. I also made sure I got to bed at a good time to allocate myself an extra hour of sleep. I usually don't put this much thought into recovery.

I got to the race super early as I wanted to get a long warmup in and some extra miles. I cruised for 45km at 210watts, and my heart rate was right where I expected it to be ~135bpm. I thought I had done everything right, and somehow I pulled off a great recovery.

The race started with attacks and I felt ok for the first 10km. I even put in a little attack myself that was quickly neutralized. But this whole time my heart rate was well above threshold. After a couple laps I wasn't able to keep up with the attacks, and drifted back, and then off the back. My heart rate got up to 190bpm by the time I got dropped (the highest I have seen this year is 192). I thought maybe they would sit up and I could catch back on, but no dice. After a while of hammering myself into the ground, the breakaway caught me and I was pulled 26km into the 60km race.

The next morning my resting heart rate was 47, compared to its usual 56. It was a very disappointing race, as I have been training like crazy and there was no reason for me to not have finished the race. With my big races still ahead of me, I decided to make sure I get extra rest this week so I don't suffer the same result in the races ahead. Physically I needed a reset, and definitely a mental one too. I am using the Giro to get amped up to race again, and this is helping me use up time that I would otherwise use riding. Also school has been pretty hectic, so it was good timing for a down week to stay on top of things.

So this post is more of me making a commitment to myself, that despite a terrible race, I WILL be back for more. I will leave you with a nice little quote that always gets me fired up. No idea who it came from originally.

Be the type of person that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit, they're up."